Kim Kardashian West Calls out Wall Street Journal for Denialist Ad

LOS ANGELES (Complex Magazine) — Kim Kardashian West has strong words for the Wall Street Journal, which earlier this year published an ad supporting Armenian genocide denial.

“My family and I are no strangers to BS in the press,” reads her full-page ad in Saturday’s New York Times. “We’ve learned to brush it off. Lies make good headlines, good headlines make great covers, great covers sell magazines. But when I heard about this full-page ad that ran in the Wall Street Journal denying the Armenian genocide, I couldn’t just brush it off.”

For the Wall Street Journal to publish something like this is reckless, upsetting and dangerous. It’s one thing when a crappy tabloid profits from a made-up scandal, but for a trusted publication like WSJ to profit from genocide — it’s shameful and unacceptable. Why is it every time we take one forward, we take two steps back?”

The controversial ad in the WSJ was paid for by the Turkic Platform. When Gawker asked the WSJ about their ad, the company said, “We accept a wide range of advertisements, including those with provocative viewpoints. While we review ad copy for issues of taste, the varied and divergent views expressed belong to the advertisers.”

Kardashian wonders if an ad denying the Holocaust would have made it to print.

She wrapped up her letter, paid for by the supporters of the Armenian Educational Foundation, by pushing the importance of having the US government recognize the event as genocide — something President Barack Obama has not done, according to the Associated Press.

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“When we allow ourselves to be silenced by money, by fear and by power, we teach our children that truth is irrelevant,” she said. “We have to be responsible for the message we pass on to our children.”

Kardashian, 34, is of Armenian decent and visited the country in April 2015 for the 100th anniversary of the genocide, which saw the deaths of 1.5 million at the hands of the Turkish government.

The Kardashian family escaped Armenia in 1913 and Kardashian-West has frequently been vocal about the need for the world to recognize the events of 1915 as a genocide. Last year she wrote a piece in TIME urging Barack Obama to label the massacre as a genocide and in April 2015 she went on an eight-day tour of Armenia with her husband Kanye West, her sister Khloe and two Armenian cousins, Kara and Kourtni.